The Foreign Service Journal, May 2014

8 MAY 2014 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Remembering Our History BY SHAWN DORMAN LETTER FROM THE EDITOR T Shawn Dorman is the editor of The Foreign Service Journal. his year marks nine decades of the Foreign Service and AFSA. On May 24, 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Rog- ers Act into law, establishing the modern Foreign Service. The history of the For- eign Service and AFSA is our focus in this anniversary month. And speaking of birthdays, The Foreign Service Journal is actually 95 this year! The American Consular Association pub- lished the first issue of our precursor, the eight-page American Consular Bulletin , in March 1919. That organization was expanded into the American Foreign Ser- vice Association after the Rogers Act was passed, and the magazine was renamed, as well. The new publication began with bold ambitions, which have stood the test of time: “This first printed bulletin of the American Consular Association is the result of a feeling on the part of many consular officers that there should be some organ by which information of interest to the Service might be dissemi- nated—an organ which would provide a medium for the exchange of ideas look- ing to the improvement of the service as well as news of the activities of particular officers.” Fittingly, it was during that birthday month that we took the Journal and other AFSAmaterials to the International Stud- ies Association convention in Toronto. The ISA was established in 1959 to promote research and education in international affairs and to be the premier organization for connecting scholars and practitioners in the field of international studies. I made the trip to Toronto, along with retired FSO Robert Dry, a member of AFSA’s Professionalism and Ethics Committee, to represent AFSA and the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. Our goal was to make connections in the academic world and share the practitioners’ perspectives through AFSA and ADST materials ( The Foreign Service Journal , the Inside a U.S. Embassy book and the ADST oral histories, which were conveniently featured in our March issue). The divide between the study of international relations and the practice of diplomacy that I saw firsthand in Toronto was striking, indeed, and begs to be addressed. Happily, in this month’s fea- ture, “The American Way of Diplomacy,” Robert Hutchings does just that, offering a reality check and ideas for elevating diplomacy as a subject for serious study. To illuminate AFSA’s own 90-year history, this fall AFSA’s Foreign Service Books imprint will publish a new book, The Voice of the Foreign Service: A History of AFSA. It’s author, former FSO Harry Kopp, has been poring over archival documents and old FSJ s, interviewing, researching and writing for the last 18 months, and the book is close to completion. Look for it before the end of our anniversary year. For this issue, in “Foreign Service, Civil Service: HowWe Got to Where We Are,” Mr. Kopp looks at the sensitive and some- times contentious Foreign Service-Civil Service relationship over time, including the controversial 1950s Wristonization program and its impact on the present state of FS-CS relations. Then we take a close look at how the Rogers Act came to be with “In the Begin- ning: The Rogers Act of 1924,” written by two retired FSOs, AFSA Vice President for Retirees Larry Cohen and James Lamont—who may just be the only per- son to have written his Ph.D. thesis on the Rogers Act. Everyone concerned with the Foreign Service should be familiar with this act, so here is your primer. To conclude our focus, we offer a selection of vignettes from AFSA mem- bers, active-duty and retired, on some of their best moments in the Foreign Service, followed by a condensed AFSA History Timeline. Elsewhere in this month’s issue, Ambassador Robert Hunter calls for “Get- ting State and the FS Back in the Game” (Speaking Out). And you’ll find a fascinat- ing account of Ambassador Charles Yost’s tenure in Cold War Morocco, written by his daughter, in FS Heritage. We welcome your feedback on this issue and encourage you to think about submitting a letter or a full article for a future issue. Author guidelines can be found on the FSJ page of the AFSA website. If you’re keen to share but not to write, send us a favorite recent photo from an interesting place for Local Lens. Next month, look for perspec- tives on the diplomatic corps of other countries, written by practitioners. n